With an excellent forecast for the long weekend we headed down to Südtirol/Osttirol and the Pustertal for a weekend of paragliding and road cycling. On the first morning we got up very early and headed down to Speikboden, where I had planned to fly a classic 100km FAI triangle.
Unfortunately due to traffic we arrived later than I had hoped, and my stomach wasn’t feeling great on the drive which made me, rightly, concerned that it might be a flight where I suffered from airsickness.
After taking the lifts and faffing in the wind while I had to connect my new glider, I was eventually ready to take off, however my first attempt wasn’t as successful as I would have hoped. The combination of the strong wind and a new glider that I wasn’t familiar with resulted in my getting plucked and failing the launch. The second attempt was much better and I was soon in the air and climbing away, unfortunately at this point I realised that I had managed to break a break line in the upper cascades. As this was in the middle of the wing and it seemed to handle well, I decided to continue with the flight.
The flight went very quickly as I fell in love with the wing and the ability to stay on speedbar through all sorts of turbulence with the rear riser control. Unfortunately my previous concern about my stomach definitely proved to be true, and very soon into the flight I was being sick, which persisted for the remainder of the flight.
Soon I was at the western turnpoint, unfortunately I arrived very low and in the Lee which resulted in a tricky, turbulent, climb out in very strong conditions. The next leg of the flight was over the lower hills of Lüsen, which I have been led to believe can be a tricky section, but with these conditions it was very straightforwards and I was soon on my way to the Dolomites.
The Dolomites were generally very easy with strong climbs, however it was very windy around my southern turn point which made the initial part of the journey back much more difficult, until I arrived at a wind facing slope and managed to climb away.
On the last leg the views were outstanding, as I climbed up to almost 4000m and quickly headed back towards the Ahrntal. As I arrived at the northern end of the Dolomites the north wind became very strong, and with Kronplatz looking blue I decided to head directly towards the Antholz mountains. Due to the wind I arrived very low here but managed to climb up in the Lee which I felt very proud of. Unfortunately with what came later, I wish I had bombed out!
The next climb was very windy and turbulent, so I decided to just glide towards the Ahrntal for landing, rather than trying to extend the flight to the north. Unfortunately as I made the glide I dropped into a horrible Lee and had to fight hard to get out as the wind was so strong with excessive turbulence, according to my vario I was briefly descending at ~10m/s!
Thankfully I made it out of the tight spot and then made a nice landing in a very strong valley wind, half bar until the floor!
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